by SunMum
SunMum is a UK parent with kids who have been affected by gender ideology. She can be found on Twitter @Mum3Sun
One of the poems Thomas Hardy wrote after the death of his wife Emma in 1912 is called ‘The Voice’:
Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me,
Saying that now you are not as you were
When you had changed from the one who was all to me,
But as at first, when our day was fair.Can it be you that I hear? Let me view you, then,
Standing as when I drew near to the town
Where you would wait for me: yes, as I knew you then,
Even to the original air-blue gown!
We instantly recognise voices – whether those of our loved ones or an actor we vaguely know doing the voice–over for a commercial. I still sometimes hear my mother’s voice, even though she died almost twenty years ago. A voice seems to contain the essence of the person.
Maybe that’s why when my son tried to talk like a woman (rather, like the parody of a woman in his head), it hurt. I hated his altered voice. I would tense up at once. But I also knew I was lucky because oestrogen does not change the male voice, and his effort to sound like a woman never lasted long. How much harder must it be for mothers of trans-identified girls when testosterone begins to change their voices? Do they hear the voice of a lost daughter, as Hardy heard his wife, ‘Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me, /Saying that now you are not as you were’?
I started this piece thinking about the mothers I know who have daughters affected by the trans ideology. But then I read Mary Beard’s pamphlet, ‘Women and Power: a manifesto’ (Profile Books, 2017) and a penny dropped. I realised that the voices of women who speak in public have been criticised, since the time of the ancient Greeks and Romans to today.
According to a familiar story, Elizabeth the First had to deny her own femaleness to ensure that her troops would take her words seriously: ‘I know I have the body of a weak, feeble woman’ she is supposed to have said, ‘but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too’. Margaret Thatcher, Beard reminds us, ‘took voice training specifically to lower her voice, to add the tone of authority that her advisers thought her high pitch lacked.’(p. 39) In the second century, a lecturer called Dios Chrysostom asked his audience to imagine what would happen if
‘an entire community was struck by the following strange affliction: all the men suddenly got female voices, and no male – child or adult – could say anything in a manly way. Would not that seem terrible and harder to bear than any plague?’ (p. 19)
And then I remembered something I had forgotten for several decades: that I had hated the sound of my own voice as a young woman. Hearing my voice on an answerphone would make me curl up with embarrassment. As a student in the 1970s I used to wonder how women could possibly be taken seriously when they spoke in public or addressed a crowd – those squeaky high-pitched voices, I thought, were inevitably ridiculous. Maybe young women still share these feelings.
Given the negative associations of high voices, it’s not surprising that boys and men attract criticism for voices that don’t sound sufficiently male. Shon Faye reveals in his video for Tate Britain that he was bullied as a child for his ‘shrill’ voice. Dios Chrysostom would have sympathised: ‘Would not that seem terrible and harder to bear than any plague?’ For men trying to transition, hormones don’t help and although gender identity clinics offer voice training, leading trans women now seem not to bother. Listen, for instance, to Riley J. Dennis, whose voice has nothing of the acquired high tone of Christine Burns, a trans woman from an earlier generation heard here in conversation with gender clinician Stuart Lorimer. ‘Have you heard how low my voice actually is?’ asks Shon Faye. And then he answers his own question: ‘Yes, of course you have, because now you never stop mentioning it. Yes, suddenly I’m no longer a girl, I’m a man, a thug in a dress.’
Shon Faye’s voice reads as low within a female range rather than high in the male range. But as a trans woman he was invited to make a film for Tate Britain’s 2017 exhibition “Queer British Art 1861-1967.” Mary Beard noticed that Elizabeth I had to claim to be a man to be heard by her troops. Tate Britain offers the same quotation as an example of queer identities in history. Call it queer and we won’t notice that the female voice has disappeared:
‘Under Elizabeth, English drama flourished and often reflected this idea of gender as a role to be performed. According to the conventions of the time, in the theatre all parts were played by men, but this very restriction prompted playwrights – most notably Shakespeare – to create plots in which boys play girls who play boys to win boys.’
That’s right: ‘all parts were played by men’.
It cannot be coincidental that the ‘brilliant trans voices’ that Owen Jones wrote about in the Guardian in 2017 were all natal males: Shon Faye, Paris Lees and Munroe Bergdorf. Has the ‘onward march’ of history taken us back to the 16th century?
Maybe our trans-identified daughters (and sons) are onto something. With their hormonally lowered voices, our daughters hope at last to be heard. Our trans-identified sons tell us not to complain that their low voices don’t sound feminine. They know that they will still be heard.
How can women’s voices be heard, asks Mary Beard: ‘rather than push women into voice training classes to get a nice, deep, husky and entirely artificial tone, we should be thinking more about the fault-lines and fractures that underlie dominant male discourse’. But some of our daughters can’t wait for that uncertain future time. Hormones allowed Alex Bertie to publish ‘A brave and ground-breaking first-hand account of [his] life, struggles and victories’. Would his struggle have gained a publisher if his voice had not broken? The trans voice mirrors age-old assumptions about the voice of authority. What disappears is the voice that is known and loved, the irreplaceable sound of the woman much missed.
Oh oh oh!!!
This is so so true! I miss my daughter’s voice. The voice I knew and loved.
She sang all the time. The sweetest a voice a man could NEVER have. She sang and sang, always singing.
And in a step taken under the engulfing deception of lies fed to her, and the ensuing defiance and hatred towards her perfect female voice …far away from me, she was administered poison by the evil lying “body fixers.” They destroyed my daughter’s unique and beautiful voice.
Poison into her body did that. Someone gave her that poison. Someone told her it was a good thing.
Someone, whoever you are, may you all rot in hell.
This reminds me so much of the recent publicity involving “Puck,” a person who appears to be deeply troubled and confused (Puck bills Puckself as a “genderqueer elf”), yet who is also a counselor for young people at the Tavistock clinic in Great Britain.
In Puck’s blog post, https://www.queerspirit.net/blog/171-men-only, Puck repeatedly refers to “trans guys” with “soft,” “unbroken voices.” There seems to be something deeply nostalgic or affectionate in this description, so much so that it has stuck with me since I read it. Presumably it is a rite of passage, of sorts, for girls who are taking testosterone, for their voices to change and then never to be the same, similar to the “voice-change” that happens to boy sopranos.
How strange and sad.
Once my 18-year-old daughter jumped onto hormones and her voice started changing, I went into shock, and our whole relationship started crumbling. I had no idea that anyone could get testosterone so easily, and my daughter received a prescription in a single day’s appointment at an informed consent gender clinic.
I bet no one there explained to her how a change in her voice would impact her family, which, like sound waves do, would reflect right back to her. Some things cannot be undone. Not valuing what you mean to your loved ones means you don’t value them.
They also don’t warm them that it will likely be hard to find a partner after going trans, especially for MTF.
This is so true. I have been in the trans community for over 40 years, and no sane, normal person wants to be in a long term relationship. I usually see more TS with other TS, despite how unfullfiling this is to both.
Wonderful essay. It brings up an important aspect of all this that I hadn’t thought of. We do love the voices of the people we love. It must be so tough to lose that. They change their outer appearance but then also change something from the inside, something so very connected to our association of them. I also enjoyed how you lead into the subject of your essay.
But… just to mention…. Shon Faye. Not a fan. He has a tweet out that tells women, “enjoy your erasure”. I can’t feel much for someone with such a nasty side to his personality.
Indeed I agree. I am not not a fan of Shon Faye’s gloating over the erasure of women. Shon Faye was a make up wearing man in the Guardian soon before he started talking as an expert about child transition. But I try when I write to imagine other points of view…
This made me cry. I miss my child’s voice with a deep deep longing. I was advised to mourn and get over it by a paid therapist. I was basically told that my feelings are damaging to my kid. I cry alone. I make sure to try to keep all interactions positive and loving so I don’t lose my beloved child. There is nowhere to be honest about my feelings and I am told they are wrong and damaging. Funny how none of the therapists my kid has gone to has there own kids?! Bet they could empathize a little better with a parents struggle if they had kids themselves
I am also told not to voice my objections to my son wanting to change because it will hurt him and push him away. No one cares about the terrible affects on the family. How can I stop trying to protect my son from something I’m positive he will regret? That’s my job as a parent! I’m not sure I’ll survive this whole thing, but who cares?
I worried I might make parents cry. But honestly we need to be allowed to cry. It made me mad that therapists had no empathy for the parents. In the end though i hope we can love our strangely altered offspring. And the lowered voices of detransitioned women like Carey Callaghan are beautiful.
My 21 year old daughter has been on Testosterone for about a year now. Several months ago she was injured and wanted to come stay at home for a few days while she recovered. I came home from somewhere and she was in the shower so I tapped on the door to let her know I was home and the voice that replied to me from behind the door startled me. For a moment I thought it wasn’t her in there. I went into my bedroom and wept. I miss her feminine voice calling me mom, I hate this so much.
This is a lovely essay, Sunmum. I am a Thomas Hardy fan and love the poem you have chosen.
If eyes are the window to the soul, what is the voice? Is it the soul speaking?
Can the soul be changed? Yes, it can.
I hear my daughter’s voice every day in my head–yet–I will never hear her natural voice again.
I personally cannot relate to women not being taken seriously for their voices, as I know so many strong women with powerful, natural, womanly voices.
If you can’t beat them, join them? Is that how some women feel?
What I know is that in a moral universe, we would not be prescribing and applauding testosterone use in young women.
It is aiding and abetting self-harm.
This is one of the other things I wrote to my son’s therapist’s office! Aside from telling them of the absolute rudeness towards me by her I told them that they need to be very careful with this subject. If my child was anorexic and they agreed with her, yes you are right, you are fat then she would die. By telling my son that he is right, he is a girl born as a boy then they are promoting self hatred. Encouraging it, even celebrating it! I’m floored by this lack of logic in the medical community and that the part of the community that finds this as appalling as we do aren’t standing up and fighting this epidemic.
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The kids and now the doctors are using this self harm and suicide threat BS as emotional blackmail on the parents to force them to accept the doctor’s diagnosis. Call them on it. If the kid is so screwed up as to attempt suicide, then it shows that this is a mental illness and not natural. I have spoken to many parents where this has happened. One kid went so far as to blame DJTrump as being a threat and if the parents didn’t use his SHE pronoun he was going to cut himself. What crap! And if a kid who is living at home threatens it, record it, report the kid for suicide watch. When he gets out, he will either kill himself, or know that he can’t blackmail his parents into dropping all of their morals, and understanding of right and wrong just to fit the kid’s screwy reality. I am a mtf 40 yr post op. I wrote Don’t get on the plane Why sex change surgery will ruin your life.
Thank you for this piece, Sunmum. Hugs to you! Mumtears were flowing as I read it.
Our 20 yr old daughter (youngest of 2 daughters) notified her father and I, 3 days before Christmas, that she has decided to start T. Notified us by calling together a family meeting with us and her older sister. She had us use a ‘talking stick’. The conversatin was mostly calm. About 1.5 yr ago, she was given a paper prescription for Androgel from a new-to-her family doctor (on her 3rd visit with him), which she never filled. She saw the same doctor few days after Christmas. He gave her the prescription for T and had her do some blood-work. He had previously referred her to our city’s “gender psychologist, but the wait list is years long. He has never sent her to a general psychologist for further mental health assessments. She told us that he quickly went through possible side effects , all while looking at a computer screen and that he told her NOTHING about reproductive planning concerns. She told us she plans to “go slow” and keep a journal and that if she notices changes she doesn’t like, she will reconsider or stop taking the prescription. I believe she is very naive. She really doesn’t seem to understand the permanence of many of the side effects of T on female bodies. She doesn’t understand the extreme power testosterone can have in the human body. Her father and I have clearly and calmly told her our concerns, both from a personal/life experience standpoint as well as from my professional standpoint as a Registered Nurse. I bristle because the current use of these off label, unstudied prescriptions in young healthy bodies is unprecedented. In no other medical or mental health condition would this happen in this way. And I am certain that a tsunami of harmed adults is coming. I had hoped my daughter wouldn’t become one of them, but here we are.
She developed ROGD almost 5 years ago, at age 16, just as body/pubertal changes were happening. After spending a lot of time on Tumblr and watching Youtube videos. 5 long years. Much longer than I expected or hoped for. Prior to this, as a child she never showed any concerns about her femaleness and she presented absolutely nothing to indicate any sort of maleness, regarding the way she acted, preferences for toys/clothing, Nothing. She has always been very academically advanced but socially/emotionally much younger than same-age peers. She still is to this day! However, she’s been supported in her transgender belief by friends, teachers, employers and leaders of athletic activities she participates in (Parkour). Her older sister supports her beliefs. Her father and I support her university education, housing and food. We let her know that we love her and I believe she understand that we do and that her home is a “safe space” for her. If not, would she not have removed herself from our home full time? However, her father and I do not use her “preferred” male name nor do we use her male pronouns. Actually, she has never corrected us or specifically asked us to do so. She has never told anyone in our close, local extended families about her feelings about being transgender, and still has not done so, even though we spent dinners/long evenings with both sides of our families over Christmas. Some of them, I think, suspect something’s up, but I don’t believe any of them understand the gravity of this. And most of them, grandparents in particular, have no clue that anything is wrong.
I dread the change in her voice. I dread hearing it deepen. I dread the effect the change in her voice will have on our family, who are mostly unawares of any of this going on. I also fear that her personality/ spark will be extinguished. It’s all so terribly wrong.
But I #WontBeShutUp about this. You can find me on Twitter at Mumtears1. And I will not be on the wrong side of history when the walls come crashing down on all of the harm currently being done.
Mumtears
Sounds like a perfect description of our 19-year-old daughter who is threatening T. Her gender dysphoria appeared suddenly 2-plus years ago. It’s a struggle ever since.
I do wonder how this time will be described in the history books. Insanity comes to mind.
Medical abuse. One of the most disturbing instances of it. I wonder who chiefly will be blamed for it, the witless doctors or the crossdresser transactivists. 😥
So much sympathy to all the people here whose kids have got caught up in this horror.
SunMum, another great post.
The above comments are just devastating. The parents’ pain is palpable. These are the real life impacts of constantly promoting gender ideology (not science) and combining it with reduced gatekeeping. Hopefully more concerned journalists and health care professionals will emerge. We need their help. Many, many families are struggling with this situation. It’s an international phenomenon.
This is a major epidemic and the medical establishment won’t talk about it. Because they caused it. Ten years ago, there were only 8 surgeries a month, and last year nearly 7000 SRS in the USA. These kids are wrong, they are going to end up killing themselves after surgery. Right now that rate is already 50%. and will only grow as these kids find out gender confusion is not real. I just spoke to a large group in NH about this. Pls watch… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lN0sT6bHjR8&t=10s
Thank you for campaigning to protect kids from this. I watched your talk and it is great. So direct and funny and truthful.
This was a lovely essay and I thank you for writing it. This is an aspect I really hadn’t considered to this degree. Thank you.
My son has started taking hormone therapy, I believe about a month ago. I can’t know for sure, but that is about when he stopped coming by so often. I went in for a dental appointment and told them our dental was better than it was and I was going to see about adding him to our dental plan again because he still had work that really needs done. The receptionist told me how excited he is having his own insurance so now he can start hormone therapy. My whole being went into shock. I cried through most of the procedure. I am not someone who has ever been able to control crying. I assumed I’d grow out of it, but it only got worse. My therapist says it’s call being a Highly Sensitive person, along with many other symptoms. It’s highly embarrassing. What a way to find out, and she never apologized to me, though she did call and warn him. Worst Christmas ever. I feel like this is slowly killing me. Everyone keeps telling me to stop trying to stop him. I will lose him. But I’m losing him anyway and I’m trying not to. Why don’t people see that?
I also believe that though he’s 22 his mental development seems closer to that of a freshman in high school.
I remember telling my oldest son that his brother had said he was a woman. It was when we were out and then I just broke down and wept and wept. It was such a strong reaction. And so odd to meet professionals who have no idea what this means. When a kid told me they were gay I said ‘great’, what shall we have for supper…
PaladinMon. Unfortunately, therapists today seemed to be more concerned with ideaology and not hurting people’s feelings than they are with what is best long term for each individual. The more my kid is involved with the mental health profession the more distressed they have become. When I was asked to provide a history it was all completely dismissed and now I am the one causing all of my kids distress. So… not only are they enabling my kid to only believe one narrative about why one could experience gender dysphoria they are also enabling my kid to use me as the reason for his declining mental health! Great! Such a simple easy answer. Shut the meddling parents up for having concerns, provide mentally distressed young people with hormones and surgeries on their healthy bodies and if after all that they regret their decisions….. no biggie! It was just part of their journey! I think the clinics and therapists like this narrative because it allows them to feel no responsibility. How convenient for them. We, as loving and concerned parents don’t get the luxury of washing our hands clean of rresponsibility. This is why I have told my kid that I cannot give my blessing to medical intervention. I said that if they wound up regretting it or they were harmed that I could never live with that as a mother. My kids mental health is declining! I keep saying this but the therapists would rather stick to her narrative and blame it on me. If you have concerns and questions try to very carefully speak to your son if you can. Why is it so evil to question??? I don’t get it. It’s all extremely concerning to me. Hang in there! I feel your pain
Awakened,
My son’s therapist laughed and shook her head when he told her about my thoughts on why he feels he is transgender. I spoke to him about how he was bullied and lost all of his friends, who were girls, when he transitioned to middle school. The boys bullied him and the girls liked the boys and began doing the same. He lost all of his friends. So, of course he had a dream he was a girl and he was happy! I think he stayed stunted there, mentally, until recently. His therapist never once acknowledged I was even there when I dropped him off, even after I asked him to introduce us. She was turning away after he did so I stuck my hand out and she shook it and walked off without a word, polite smile, or even eye contact!! I have written a letter to her practice but they can’t tell you what happens, though they said they were taking it seriously. But when you laugh off logic is, well, illogical. And that belittles me to him.
There is more. More bullying by teachers and children. We tried talking to the schools, we changed schools, we did everything we could think of. And we are being disregarded as if we don’t know him and didn’t raise him. He is also like me, highly sensitive, so he cried a lot. His dad and every other male example he had were men’s men, so he felt different. But she laughs off all of this as if I’m stupid. He was 21 when he started seeing her and he said he’s not seeing her anymore, he’s happy now, he says. I can’t see it.
This helpless feeling is traumatic. I truly believe if he does this and realizes that he’s not any better or happier he is at a very high risk for suicide. I am afraid for his life!! And my husband is afraid for mine. And yet this horrible girl will keep telling patients the same thing. She told him she was excited because he was her first transgender patient! In my letter I told them that by saying that, she is promoting it, not being objective and worried for his health.
I know how you feel. We are the bigots, the bad guys. All of their problems are because we refuse to accept these lies.
We too have decided not to support it via insurance, using his new name, or his preferred pronouns. While living at home he was not allowed to “present” as a woman. My therapist advised us to say we love and support him, but we do not support what he is doing.
I am taking a writing class and for the first time I’m considering academic writing. I hope to one day write an essay as provocative of that of SunMum. I think parents of young children should be very wary of their pediatrician, teachers, and their child’s internet activity. My daughter is going to home school like I wish I had.
Thank you for your kind words and it is nice to find a place where parents aren’t thrilled that their child just mutilated their body.
PalidinMon. Take a look at Thirdwaytrans blog. His story is very similar to your sons
Gender is very complex and issues related to children’s welfare are very sensitive,, and I will not comment on individual cases but two points are worth considering for this site as a whole:
First, transgender people can be just as gender non-conforming in the gender they identify as anyone else. They need not wear the type of clothing stereotypically associated with their identified gender nor act in a way that reflects gender stereotypes. Transgender people have often had to fight in order to be allowed to transition against the views of medical professionals who did not consider that they conformed to their identified gender enough e.g, medical professionals opposing the transition of transgender people who identify as gay.
Secondly while parents often do know their children best there is a difference between wanting what is the best thing for your children and wanting them to conform to your vision for their future. How many parent-child relationships have been damaged by parental expectations that did not work for the child?
It benefits no one to think every single ‘case’ discussed here is the same.
Well, sigh. So, Joseph, you think that we are arguing that “every single ‘case’ discussed here is the same.”
The SIXTH referenced article on the sidebar of this site is “Gender Dysphoria is Not One Thing” – //4thwavenow.com/2017/12/07/gender-dysphoria-is-not-one-thing/ – which, among other things, discusses the “complexity” and “sensitivity” of issues surrounding children, teens, and their gender.
Any other observations you’d like to bless us with, before you bother looking at anything this site has to offer?
Who said every case is the same? the problem as of recently is more that mental health professionals and gender clinics treat everyone as a homogenous group. If you say you are trans you are and medically transitioning will alleviate your distress. When it turns out that hormones didn’t alleviate your distress blame it on the parents or society. This is absolutely happening to families. Slow and careful consideration and truly weighing risk and benefit is not happening. It’s not even allowed!! Maybe for younger kids this happens but speaking from experience once you are an older teen or young adult no way! Is anyone saying right now medically transitioning is life changing in every way and let’s slow down a bit and consider all options so you can make the best most informed decision? No. That is NOT happening. This is exactly why more detransitioners are speaking out. And how nice that mental health professionals and gender therapists get to claim … it was just part of their journey! Some people who detransition do feel that way but some absolutely are traumatized by the journey and have a lot of ill feelings towards these professionals. And rightfully so! But their stories are inconvenient and don’t fit the narrative that professionals like so they are dismissed. This is a one way street and it’s hurting a lot of people along the way!
Also… I actually do feel bad for future people who really would benefit by medically transitioning because the way things are going now where it’s hormones and surgery for anyone who asks without careful and caring exploration first there is going to be a backlash and it may go back to the gate keeping of yore. I see the problem with gatekeeping but I do believe we can come to a middle ground so that more people are protected. An 18 year old girl who never once in her life said or showed anything in her behaviors that she was deeply distressed by her femaleness who becomes involved with a group of peers that start questioning their gender and suddenly decides that she wants hormones and her healthy breasts removed without any questioning allowed is probably not making a good decision. When I say that to the therapist I am unsupportive! Wow! Just wow!
The gatekeeping was there for a reason. Professionals for decades had most of… if not the majority of patients who for various reasons should not have had the surgery. The role of the therapist was to safeguard people from their own irrational behavior. And to support those who could not be helped by therapy. In reality, very few people were and are today true transsexuals. As for your comment that people actually benefit from sex changes. How in the world do you explain the 50% of all post op patients attempting suicide. This is 49.4 % higher than the rest of the population. (.6%) Our high post op rate is not from our parents not loving us, or from lack of legal protections, it is an epidemic caused by the fact that the surgical butchery that we call SRS is not the right treatment for this condition. It is from the fact that we and our doctors have created Eunuchs out of ourselves and normal, sane people aren’t sexually interested in having intimate relationships with us. Cross sex living is not a viable lifestyle, never was and never will be. If people want to live on the fringe of society by calling themselves non binary and they and them, go for it. But don’t expect a real company to be willing to hire you, and unless you like dating other people just as fringe as yourselve, rule out long term, stable relationships as well.
Yes very fair point about the need for full consideration and support and to point out the life changing affects of transition.
My argument was less about the role of medical professionals acting as gatekeepers and preventing people from transitioning (which is indeed a perfectly valid topic to discuss and I agree that the role of professionals should be to ensure people think about all their options and suggest possible alternatives that might not have been considered). I was more trying to defend diversity among those who have transitioned and are happy that they have. I do not think any one was specifically making this point here, but there can be an assumption that those who transition want to live according to strict gender roles and many do not at all.
I certainly agree that full discussion and all available information is beneficial to everyone and we can learn from a variety of experiences including those who are happy to have transitioned and those whose lives have been badly damaged by it.
Okay, so I am confused. If people want to be a diverse gender, and not confined to traditional sex roles, then why can’t they be that, without cutting off perfectly healthy organs? Their diverse gender role has nothing to do with anatomy. You can see this over and over in people who are defining themselves as non binary They and Them pronouns. So why cut off your penis??
In the same way that a non-transgender person can be physically comfortable in their biological sex but feel they do not fit social gender roles, a transgender person can be physically uncomfortable in their biological sex and wish to physically present differently without conforming to the gender roles traditionally ascribed to the gender they are transitioning to. For example there are Female to Male transgender people who are drag artists (male to female). They do not identify as non-binary they identify as male but male related to physical presentation and pronouns rather than strict social gender roles.
Again it is an example of variation among people. Surgery is a very serious step but it is the way that some people adapt to life, for others being non-binary without surgery works better (and some non-binary people have surgery, and some transgender people do not).
PS I am genuinely sorry if I implied that commentators here did not consider diversity in relation to gender expression.
My concern here was related to the possible conflation of situations where children are worryingly encouraged to transition without adequate investigation,
and where parents find it difficult to accept that their child would benefit from transition, which is a very painful position to be but may not help their child in the long term.
Apologies if I was unfairly critical.
Best wishes to you all.